Theory of magic
by irdgad
Summary: Ideas on how magic works as written by Harry during his work as head of unspeakable's in the DOM. My first ever fanfiction. Reviews are highly appreciated.Will be starting a new fic that incorporates some of the theories in this story.
1. Chapter 1

Unspeakable archive

_Article no: 1284-AK, Hx  
_

_Author: Unspeakable no 000 (Harry James Potter)_

The killing curse is one of the most powerful curses available, capable of passing through any and all shields because of one simple reason. It is not technically a curse, in other words it's not a piece of regular magic. It is in very simple terms, a piece of the soul of the caster, typically averaging about seven percent of the original. No magical shield is designed to stop a fragment of soul. The soul is the conduit for magic. The killing curse striking at any living being, on any part of the body will simply push out the soul. Once the connection to the body is broken, the soul disintegrates almost completely. This is the sole reason why a person once dead cannot be brought to life. The echo of a once complete soul is what necromancers try to call back and is less than a ghost which is a conscious imprint that the soul creates before disintegrating in an attempt to hold on to life. A ghost contains all the memories of the soul and part of the original being.

The resurrection stone, one of the famed deathly hallows is the greatest creation of any necromancer. Using the wearer's ties to that person, it calls to this echo. The echo is NOT the exact soul of the person called back. It varies depending on the caller's connection to the dead person. This is the reason why calling back a soul by necromancy to prove the innocence or guilt of a person accused of murder is not a valid legal option. The echo's response will most likely vary depending on its caller.

Breaking up a soul to power the killing curse is no simple task. To do so requires an intimate understanding of the soul or a very powerful emotive force. In simpler terms, emotion strong enough to overcome and rip apart a piece of the very fabric of ones being. True hate of another is the only emotion that one can harness in an effort to do such a deed.

Once cast out, the piece of soul will immediately return to the caster. This ripping of the soul is what causes nausea, fatigue and the feeling of loss that every first time user of the kiliing curse experiences. It has been well documented that they feel they have changed something that made them what they are.

This feeling of change will persist for varying lengths of time depending on the person. The soul, given a sufficiently long enough time, anything varying from two to five years starting immediately from the moment of return, will reintegrate with the rest of it.

This variation in time is due to the individuals acceptance of the deed. Someone who feels repulsed by his actions will take longer to accept back the fragment. But repeated use of the killing curse before this recuperating duration will cast out this same piece. In this case repenting the crime is not the way to heal. One needs to accept what was done.

This is the reason why the avada kedavra becomes easier with repeated casting. Research has shown that after casting the curse more than seven times within one year, the fragment takes an exponential increase in time to reintegrate. In other words, it's easier to cast again.

Of course there are methods available to truly skilled wizards to destroy a soul in ways that even the echo is completely dismantled and disintegrated to pure magic leaving behind in this world no evidence of the existence of that person. To an ordinary wizard the killing curse is the surest way to end a life with no possibility of recovery.

While the working of the killing curse has been understood for over two centuries by researchers on soul magics, it has never been published to the general public.

The reason for this is the possibility that people might realize that it is an option, with sufficient preparations using a certain set of rituals, one can after casting the curse prevent it from returning to the original. In the approximately 15 seconds that the fragment would survive before completely loosing connection to the main piece, one could use a well prepared container to store it creating what has come to be called, a horcrux.

As the connection to the original piece still persists, even if the body is destroyed the soul is capable of retaining its existence without the possibility of naturally disintegrating.

What of the vacuum created in the original? It cannot remain. This will be filled by the energy that the wizarding community calls magic. The capacity of the individual, whose soul is missing a piece to channel magic, increases. The more pieces cut out the more the metaphysical area for contact with magic increases. A simpler way to understand this process can be got by imagining a solid sphere. It has a specific surface are. Now slice it by half and separate the pieces by some distance. The cut area is exposed. This implies an extra surface area equal to the areas of the two cut sides.

The optimum number of pieces removed from the soul is six. Once the first seven percent is removed, ninety three percent remains. The next soul fragment would contain only six point five one of the original. In this way removing six fragments would remove 35.5 percent of the original leaving 64.5 percent intact. According to magical theorists this would mean an increase of Magical Channeling Capacity (MCC) by nearly 49 percent. The MCC of the strongest to the weakest magic user does not vary more than 21 percent. If a person in the upper range creates six horcruxes he would most definitely be more magically stronger by half than the average magical Joe.

A highly focused stunner cast at half power by such a person would easily pass through any regular magical shield cast by the average person.

**NOTE:** There are very rare cases of people (Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Sirius Orion Black, Harry James Potter) being born with MCC 30 percent higher than the average magical Joe. Their data has not been included in the above analysis. The occurrence of people with such high MCC seems to occur once every generation for a magical population of 49,000 (This is the average magical population of magical Britain in the past 300 years).

This was my first fanfic. Please review and let me know how it was.


	2. Chapter 2

Unspeakable archive

_Article no: 1285 – Soul _

_Author: Unspeakable no 000 (Harry James Potter)_

The soul is the essence of a living being. It is also what channels energy that can be used as magic. Therefore every living being is capable of containing magic due to its soul, but not to channel it. Channeling magic to the outside of the body requires more than just the capacity to store magic.

The necessary and sufficient condition for a system, i.e a group of molecules that form a living being to contain a soul is the capacity to replicate. The origin of the soul is still a hotly debated subject in academic circles. But the moment that a system obtains the capacity to replicate or reproduce without any outside assistance, it acquires an entity that we call a soul.

It has been theorized that a few billion years ago when life started evolving from single celled to multicelled organisms, the soul too evolved. From being unique to each living system, it connected to the souls in neighboring cells forming one entity. Every cell in a body is interconnected to every other cell in the body by an essence that makes it unique. This interconnected essence forms the complete soul of a person.

The highest concentration of the connections is at the region where the heart is located. This region is called the magical core and accounts for 75% of magical energy generation by a body. The network of connections gives the capacity to channel magic from the core to other regions in the body.

As mentioned earlier, the presence of part of the soul in every cell of the body is why substances like blood and other tissue can be used in magics in connection to the individual from whom is came. Once removed from a being, any tissue will within 24 hours loose connection to the soul even if kept alive by artificial means. During this period, it can be used to perform magics that can if powerful enough affect the source of the tissue.

But even if the connection is lost in around a day, the soul's echo remains. If the tissue is kept under stasis it can still be used with sufficient power for minor magics.

Blood is a substance that is not stationary in a body. As such the connections between the cells present in it and the core are much more flexible, diverse and stronger. Even once removed from the body, the connections being stronger than for other tissue persist for the longest time making it the most useful item in long range casting on its source.

Every living organism on earth consists of genetic material. What muggle scientists have not been able to identify and that the magical ones have very recently is the presence of a magical analogue to genetic material. As in chromosomes, they occur in pairs. The laws governing the transfer of magical genetic information are exactly same as those followed by organic genetic material as is made obvious by the information given below.

There are two varieties and have been designated M1 and M2. Any combination of these pairs, i.e M1M1, M1M2 or M2M2 in a cell can provide an anchor to the soul. Most non magicals have a pair of the M2 magical gene. Around 3% of the non magical human population contains the pair M1M2. A child of two such parents has a 25 % chance of having the capacity to channel magic.

This occurrence of a pair of the M1 gene allows not just the anchor to the soul, but also the ability to channel magic through the soul to the outside of the body. There are two varieties of the M1 gene. M1a and M1b. The individuals having a pair of M1a genes or a pair contain one M1a and one M1b are what we call witches and wizards.

Around 1.5% of the magical human population contains at least one copy of the M1b gene. It appears to be a mutation of the M1a, or perhaps the M1a is a better variant of the M1b. Both provide specific traits. An individual with two copies of this gene has a highly limited capacity to channel magic through the body to the outside. These children are called squibs. It has been noticed that the complete magical energy that a squib generates is used by the body to improve itself. As such they are highly healthy individuals and remain so most of their lives. They are immune to most magical and muggle diseases and have an average lifetime that is 5% greater than of witches and wizards.

While witches and wizards also can utilize magic to improve their body, it requires an almost conscious and continuous effort which would require quite a bit of effort on part of the individual.

The Magical channeling capacity of any being depends on how the interconnections between the soul anchors in each cell occurs in a body. Obviously certain individuals have better and more streamlined connections. They have finer control of the magics they cast. Some have a larger absorption and output capacity. While these people can cast more powerful magics but can never have the fineness that someone with more streamlined channels can.

But once every generation on average, we find individuals with both absorbing and channeling capacity as good as, or better than their peers. These people end up as the truly powerful witches and wizards.

The creation of a horcrux causes the transfer of part of this network to another substance. The object to be used as a horcrux needs extensive preparation. It must have some connection to the soul. This is achieved by the use of runes to create a permanent stasis charm on the object and its contents which typically include blood, hair, bone, skin and cerebro spinal fluid. These provide the soul fragment the capacity to remain intact without disintegration.

The vacuum created by this removal of a soul fragment from living cells is filled by magic. Magic will use the echo of the removed soul and attempt at recreating the original form. A network of magical energy connected to the original soul is formed. From a closed system capable of absorbing energy from the outside, the removal of part of the soul results in an opening through which magic practically pours in.

The soul of a being contains an imprint of each and every event during. The part entrusted into a horcrux will maintain a connection to the main fragment residing in the body. But it is now incapable of registering the events and influences that the original piece experiences.

In case of the presence of multiple horcruxes, the destruction of one soul container will result in the soul fragment seeking out the nearest horcrux and integrating with the soul fragment in it. There are methods to destroy the soul fragment, but as most magics thrown at it are simply channeled through it and given back out to the environment, it is not an easy task. One would need to channel large amounts (equal to that which an average soul channels every minute) in a highly dense, compact and intense form each second and attempt at breaking indivijual filaments of the network one by one. As no one person can channel so much magic at any given time, this requires very precise and complicated rituals to achieve.

The Cruciatus curse achieves a very basic form of the above mentioned principle. The curse operates by using magic to flood the connections and attempt to break them. While the severing cannot be achieved, it is however possible to cause a mild instability of the soul. The soul of the cursed tries to remove the offending magics by forcing it out. This achieves more flooding of the connections. The end result is excruciating and incapacitating pain to the individual. It is near impossible to fight and requires the cursed to actively try to bleed out the harmful magic instead of opposing it. In other words, one is required to accept the pain, move past it and consciously

The Cruciatus curse can be powered in two ways. A magically powerful person would basically try to completely flood certain connections completely. One with fine casting would try to use less magic in concentrated form and stretch the connections as much as possible. It is possible to cast in the first method using the sheer hate of another, even if the actual principle is not understood. The second method requires understanding of the soul, precision casting and a calm mind. While the first method can be fought against, the second method is almost impossible to counter by the cursed.

The post Cruciatus pain is due to the connections trying to expel the residual magics violently and also the attempt to stabilize the pathways. A highly skilled and knowledgeable individual can achieve it in seconds whereas an average person would suffer minor pain for up to an hour. Excessive exposure to the curse would result in physical and psychological damage to the brain as it tries to cope by retreating completely or by using magic to literally sever nerve connections to remove all feeling. This would usually result in a coma or death. The post cruciatus potion works by leeching foreign magic and expelling it out of the body as heat. If taken immediately, it can cure all symptoms of the curse with the side effect of causing mild fever for a few hours

The killing curse is a part of ones soul network that is ripped out and cast into another being. It operates by severing all connections of the recipients soul to the body in an attempt to fix itself to that body. The time taken for this has been measured to be in the range of a few microseconds. Once all connections are severed, the network quickly starts to disintegrate leaving behind only a faint echo of itself in the magics of the surrounding atmosphere.

The soul fragment comprising the killing curse, after attempting to affix itself to the body and completely failing to do so due to the incompatibility of the body will return to the caster and start reintegrating itself slowly. The killing curse is a very short range curse. It will not travel beyond a distance of a hundred and fifty meters before the soul fragment is pulled back.

A killing curse that does connect and kill a person will, during the attempt to connect itself to the body of the cursed, achieve an intimate understanding of that soul's connection. This memory is not held on by the soul fragment. It on returning to the source through the wand that cast it will deposit the memory in the wand of the caster. This memory can be called back by using the reverse spell effect. In an attempt to recreate the echo of the magic previously cast, it uses the memory of the soul to attempt a reconstruction of the connections solely composed of magic.

The reverse spell effect brought about by the overloading of brother wands will call back the echo left behind by the original soul as it disintegrates. This is the closest one can come to recreating the destroyed soul. To achieve this, the person who cast the curse using the wand has to be one handling the wand and the holder of the brother wand has to be the true owner of the wand. This effect if forced and held for more than 15 minutes will result in destruction of both wands due to magical overload.

The imperius curse acts by sending a constant but small stream of mild and finely controlled magic that soothes the soul of the cursed. As such this curse is not possible through brute force. It can only be achieved and perfected through constant practice. A highly skilled user can after casting the curse and giving instructions, maintain it without anything but a small and continuous drain of magic

The cursed soul is not harmed in any way. But the soothing effect results in a willingness to perform any acts the caster demands in an attempt to keep the feeling of peace and intimate security that one feels. An order to do something that one would willingly perform is readily accepted whereas an order to do perform acts that are repulsive would be fought against. Individuals who can easily throw off the Imperius are those with a very strong sense of independence and a complete lack of willingness to follow orders. Those who grow up submitting to others demands will almost never truly fight against the curse unless a highly repulsive act is demanded of them.

The Imperius curse was initially discovered in an attempt to develop magics that could soothe and comfort animals. The control that was obtained by its use was highly prized by those seeking to bend others to their wills. At one time it was highly misused by parents in an attempt to control disobedient children. Pleasure seekers used it during sex on partners to achieve higher levels of ecstasy with each other.

The use of the curse was perfected and brought to its modern form in around the year 1630 by the so called Dark lady Marissa. Its side effects, including the decay of self awareness and the instinct of self preservation especially in children due to prolonged usage (unless the curse is being continuously and actively fought against) were well documented during the subsequent years. The truly infamous fear of the curse is due to the capacity of the curse that allows the caster, if needed to browse upon at leisure, a significant part of the memories and feelings linked to any act that a person is forced to perform. This total and complete invasion of privacy the curse afforded was unacceptable to any and all recipients of the curse. The curse was outlawed almost completely in the year 1701. Some of the exceptions for its use are in criminals convicted for life and in the control of violent mentally impaired patients.

**Note: **The highest MCC in witches in the last fifty years are those of Minerva McGonnagall, Alice Longbottom and Ginevra Weasley.


End file.
